OpenOffice.org is one of the most popular products of the FOSS (Free/Open Source) community, and for many millions of people it is their first experience of FOSS. Key to OpenOffice.org's success has been its ability to compete openly and freely with competitors on any platform, and demonstrate that FOSS is a better choice.
Uniquely among leading office suites, OpenOffice.org provides a mechanism for developers to build and release "extensions" to provide additional features. Extensions can be added and removed at will by users, giving them the freedom to tailor their own copy of OpenOffice.org to do what they need to do. The OpenOffice.org Community has created a common repository where users can select and download extensions. The OpenOffice.org Community Council has been asked by the FSF to give the FSF an effective veto over which extensions should be permitted to appear in this repository. The Community Council has felt unable to do this. We believe passionately that FOSS delivers better software - including extensions, but that users must be free to make the comparison and reach their own conclusion. It is a fact that the vast majority of our users currently run OpenOffice.org on a proprietary operating system, alongside other proprietary software. We respect their choice, and believe the best way to influence them to change is by delivering high quality FOSS software that meets their needs. The OpenOffice.org Community Council regrets that the FSF was unable to accept our compromise proposals for a more clearly signposted extensions repository. We believe the creation of an alternative repository will cause confusion and will lead to a poorer experience for users. However, we are more than happy to work with the FSF to encourage FOSS developers to address areas where proprietary only solutions exist. The OpenOffice.org Community Council http://council.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: announce-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: announce-h...@openoffice.org
